Legislation in the European Union (EU) has been enacted to reduce the level of hazardous chemicals in the environment. The Restriction of certain Hazardous Substances (RoHS) act has targeted materials such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium VI and some brominated flame retardants used in electronic devices. In order to comply with these enacted regulations, a method to detect and identify these and other hazardous materials in electronic devices is needed. Such a method should be fast and accurate to enable rapid testing and short turnaround times in keeping with the ‘time to market’ requirements of the global electronics industry. The detection method also needs to be highly cost effective and it should not have any adverse impact on the environment by using other hazardous substances in the detection procedure.